A NEHTA spokesperson said the delay will affect the Wave 1 and Wave 2 eHealth sites except for the Medibank Private consumer health portal project, the Fred IT-led MedView medicines repository project and another eHealth project that is not part of Wave 1 or 2, the Joint e-Health Data and Information System (JeHDI) project.

In a statement, NEHTA said that after “a detailed internal review and analysis”, it was pausing implementation of primary care desktop software development around its specifications for the eHealth pilot sites.

“The pilot sites were funded to implement regional eHealth capability and are not part of the national infrastructure for the PCEHR system,” the statement read.

“This pause will impact work currently being undertaken by the primary care eHealth network sites (Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local, Inner East Melbourne Medicare Local, Hunter Urban Medicare Local and Accoras (Brisbane South).

“Greater Western Sydney, St Vincent's, Calvary, Cradle Coast, NT and Mater will be impacted on the primary care elements of their projects.”

NEHTA said it was acting after internal checks detected issues in the latest release of its specifications in November 2011.

“None of the software has ever gone live,” the spokesperson said. “This is about quality control to ensure absolute confidence in the software being used in the eHealth pilot sites.

“One of the reasons for having these sites was to test software and ‘iron out the bugs’ prior to the national infrastructure go live.

“Our specifications are subject to rigorous assessment processes. These processes highlighted some technical incompatibilities across versions. We have identified problems with the specifications and have made the decision in order to avoid any risks.”

NEHTA said it would continue to work with the eHealth pilot sites and the primary care software vendors to “recalibrate their activity” within the eHealth program.

“In large projects of this scale it is not unusual for problems of this type to arise,” the spokesperson said. “We are working to manage this situation to ensure the program is delivered.”